


Heavy Gazes

by Welfycat



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Community: angst_bingo, Episode Tag, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-08
Updated: 2011-05-08
Packaged: 2017-10-19 04:17:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/196784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Welfycat/pseuds/Welfycat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spencer worries and the team worries right along with him. Episode tag to s06e19 "With Friends Like These..." and spoilers up to that point in the series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heavy Gazes

**Author's Note:**

> Content Notes: Discussion of mental illness.  
> Author Notes: Episode tag to s06e19 "With Friends Like These…" Spoilers for JJ, Corazon, and Lauren.

Spencer could feel the edge of the desk digging into his thigh as he sat, perched really. His weight was resting on the desk but he felt like it was only temporary and he was about to spring up and flee and the edge of the desk, and his awareness of the edge, was the only thing keeping him still. Well, nominally still, at least. His fingers were twitching and he kept moving his hands together to try and stop them, before realizing that he was just tapping them against each other and moved them apart again. He didn't know what he looked like to the audience of police officers and detectives that were currently watching them, he couldn't look up for long enough to check their reactions and he didn't want to see the reflection of his discomfort in their expressions. He couldn't keep his head in just one place either; every time he let his gaze settle on something he could feel the start of a headache building up behind his eyes.

He hadn't had a truly bad migraine on a case since Miami, and he was very lucky that he hadn't been killed or seriously hurt by the end of that case. The thing that scared Spencer the most was that he hadn't even realized how out of it he'd been, how confused and unsettled and making choices like walking into a completely unknown situation where he suspected the unsub was without backup or even his vest or a plan. He hadn't realized how dangerous that was until he was on the jet back to Quantico and the pain had receded. It wasn't the only stupid or dangerous decision he'd made in the course of his job, but it was the first he'd made without being aware of the risks at the time.

Spencer swallowed hard and looked to the side, his eyes flickering over the papers on the desk as he tried to pay attention to the profile that the team was presenting. It didn't fit right to him, and that wasn't just because he was barely suppressing a flinch as Morgan spoke about the unsub's limited social circle as a child and something that triggered a memory of his close friends or family. And then the unsub had snapped and was now brutally killing people across the city, Spencer finished the statement in his mind as he turned his head further away from Morgan. The doctors still hadn't found anything wrong, even though Spencer had persisted in going from specialist to specialist and doing all the research on migraines that he could without going back and getting another degree. He certainly felt like he could write a dissertation considering the amount of research material he'd already gone through. Because he wasn't going crazy, he wasn't like his mother and he certainly wasn't like this unsub.

Morgan was explaining how they needed to find what the incident was in the unsub's childhood in order to determine the unsub's identity as Spencer caught another flash of bright light through his partially closed eyelids. He shifted his body again, turning his head back to the other side of the room. If these migraines were psychosomatic, as more than one doctor had now suggested, then he had to find the cause and stop them. It wasn't something that he wanted to consider, that the blinding pain was something that he was doing to himself, but he was having to start to examine the possibility when test after test was coming back negative. He was still coming up empty on what might have been a trigger for the migraines, and his subsequent brief instability. Morgan had suggested that a childhood incident was the setup for what had triggered the unsub's current condition, but Spencer couldn't think of anything in the cases over the past year that he'd had any real connection with. The only thing that had really hurt, that had really hit home, was JJ being forced to leave the team. Spencer didn't even want to think about the connections there; he'd never reacted well to losing family members and recent events had been even worse on that front. But he didn't want to believe that something as simple as JJ moving to another agency could have triggered this.

It didn't help that he could feel Morgan and Hotch glancing over to him, their gazes full of concern. Not just because of the profile they were presenting, and its connections to Spencer, but because it was atypical of Spencer to react as poorly as he currently was while they were out in the open. It was atypical of him to react like this anywhere when he could possibly help it. Even the way Rossi was standing, nearly in front of Spencer like he was trying to block him from view of the audience, suggested that he was very aware of Spencer's predicament and was reacting protectively. Only Seaver, too new to be aware of Spencer's past and not yet accustomed and aware of the team's dynamics, seemed to be unaware of what was happening. And even she had clued into the fact that the members of the team were unusually unsettled and alert.

They didn't know, though Spencer had caught enough sideways glances from Morgan and Hotch over the past few months to suggest that they knew that something wasn't right with him, but they didn't know how Spencer was spending half of his time waiting for the pain to start again. How he kept waiting to be struck by the flashes of light that made everything in his head feel like he was coming apart and how he would _see_ things that he wasn't even sure were real or how he could be seeing them at all. They didn't know that he was sitting here, in the middle of this police station, fighting a losing battle against his own mind. If they knew that, they'd probably look at him with a lot more than a few concerned glances.

"Reid?" Hotch asked, prompting Spencer to give the geographical profile.

As Spencer stood, his eyes flashing quickly over the audience of detectives and police officers as a short and sharp pain stabbed behind his eyes. He looked back down again, focusing on his map as he began to speak as quietly as he could and still be heard. He never lost his awareness of Morgan, Hotch, and Rossi's gazes - combinations of concerned and perplexed - all focused firmly on him.


End file.
